Mini Cooper mails Spam care packages to apologize for email spam

Every weekday, PR Daily associate editor Alan Pearcy highlights the day’s most compelling stories and amusing marginalia on the Web in this, #TheDailySpin.

You always hear you shouldn’t sweat the small stuff. This is especially true when you’d be considered among that small stuff. Mini Cooper can certainly attest to this after accidentally spamming a number of its consumers’ inboxes with reportedly hundreds of emails last week. However, the maker of small autos turned the big server glitch into an even bigger PR win by sending an apologetic care package to customers who received the emails. It contained—what else—Spam. The parcel, which was posted to Reddit, included a chocolate rose, duct tape, and a “squeezable can” of the precooked meat. It also came with this apology:

"Nothing says 'I'm sorry' quite like flowers and chocolate, so we've combined the two and enclosed a chocolate rose. But if you're allergic to flowers (or chocolate), we hope this duct tape will help fix things up. Or, if you're ever feeling annoyed again, you can de-stress using this particularly squeezable can of spam."

A philanthropic gesture by David Beckham went over equally as well—even if it was clearly a PR stunt. After officially signing last week to play soccer with Paris Saint-Germain, the acclaimed soccer star donated the entirety of his salary to charity, bringing even more accolades upon him. But, as the Daily Mail put it, Beckham’s move “wasn’t so much a donation as money well spent”—the millions Beckham is forgoing have garnered the kind of publicity money can’t otherwise buy.

Perhaps galvanized by Beckham’s benevolence, a couple of soccer fans from the U.K. were captured getting a little carried away while videobombing a live “Deadline Day” report from Sky Sports News’ Kate Riley:

From one variety of football to another, Sunday’s Super Bowl had its share of highlights, but if you tuned out early, you might have missed JELL-O’s announcement that it plans to give away free pudding on Tuesday to the losing team’s hometown of San Francisco:

Speaking of giveaways, San Francisco won’t be the only city scoring a handout on Tuesday when IHOP again offers free flapjacks in honor of National Pancake Day. Aiming to raise $3 million for charity from the promotion, the restaurant received some celebrity assistance from Nick Cannon, Jordin Sparks, and Kiss front man Gene Simmons, each of whom donated time in helping market the cause:

Meanwhile, after a reported “abnormality” caused a stadium power outage at the Super Bowl, Oreo quickly stole the show on Twitter thanks to resourceful thinking. Nevertheless, a lot of activity on the social network could spark jeers instead of cheers for your brand. In fact, JPR’s Chris Harrison lists 10 things not to do while using the microblogging service.

Dos and don’ts aside, Business Insider provides 13 reasons you’ll never quit that other social media platform—Facebook.

Although they’re not quitting the business altogether, a number of the retail industry’s biggest names are shuttering their brick and mortar locations. 24/7 Wall St. reports on the eight retailers that are closing the most locations this year.